On the yearly cycle I am again
in a rut. I could just cut and paste all the entries I made last year at this
time. I think that it was perfectly summed up in the words of Mr. Gubbins, an
ennui, a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of
occupation or excitement. There is no denying that work is quiet and it seems
self compounding in that the quieter it gets the less motivation I have to get
going again. I know from experience though that I will snap out of it, I always
do. I just need a kick start and a good old post Christmas
detox.

Christmas itself was good but
over incredibly quickly. I think half the problem was that I wasn’t ready for
it. It was January before my body clock was telling me it was looking forward to
Christmas. Well it will just have to sodding wait for next December. Still
Christmas day brought a good trawl or presents including a new 60Gb video iPod.
My old 40Gb iPod photo has now gone to Jayne which is just as well as she got a
new pink Canon digital camera. I’ve bought a couple of music videos and have
got a nice little app to rip my DVD’s to the iPod. They are, despite the little
screen, surprisingly watchable.

New
Year was spent in Scotland which I’d been threatening to do for years. The guys
at Tralee Bay (www.tralee.com) put on a beach bonfire and firework display and
given that the weather held off it was a great night for as much as I remember.
I was on a mission with my large cooler full of sparkly and a bottle of
Cointreau to spike it for good measure. The mission was duly accomplished with
me unable to walk meaning most of the time post midnight was spent with my face
in the sand.

Since New Year I’ve been
taking it easy with not much going on. We all dragged ourselves out to the
cinema on Saturday initially with the intention of seeing King Kong but start
times and a last minute recommendation had us book Narnia. What a pile of shite
that was! To happy and twee for my liking. It seemed that it was a film they put
together on a lunch break while making the LotR films. Perhaps its what the
apprentices cut their teeth on.. Jayne fell asleep half way through which was
just as well as I nicked her Revels and drunk all the Coke. The evening redeemed
itself with a take away curry on the way home. We went to one of those
restaurants that do take out so having left the kids in the car while we went in
and ordered I took the opportunity to have a few beers at the bar

January is now a month of birthdays
and I’m finding that I’m in 40th birthday season. It seems that there are
excuses for a good party at every turn. The first is this weekend which buggers
up all my detox plans. Any excuse,
eh?

On the gaming front I’ve done very
little. The potential is there. I got two 360′s on release day with all the
games worth getting but I just can’t find the enthusiasm to play. Perhaps its
the lack of HD TV (not that I’m going to talk myself into that one just yet) or
maybe its lack of time to play. The TV has been in use perpetually till the
early hours most nights and since I’ve usually got my feet up with a drink I
can’t see that bouncing off the walls in PGR3 or being pissed on from a great
height (ala Halo) would bring me any enjoyment. I did buy myself a PSP and a
copy of GTA but I’m finding it more appealing as a video player. I’m working my
way through a couple of films. The app I mentioned earlier encodes for the PSP
too (http://ipsp.kaisakura.com) so I’m finding my toilet breaks very rewarding
between the iPod and the PSP. At least with the PSP I can play on my terms
without worrying about who wants to watch
TV.

As I mentioned earlier I’m looking
at iLife 06 with great interest. Well, more than great interest as I’ve already
ordered it and iWork 06. The latter is for keynote which i just love, it pisses
all over PowerPoint and its the best thing to watch Windoze users faces when you
run a presentation. The most interesting thing about iLife is all the new
blogging and podcasting support. The blog templates look very nice and with the
.Mac integration I shall shortly be moving over as I previously
indicated.

This isn’t the only purchase
brought on by this years MacWorld keynote. I’ve also ordered one of the new iPod
tuners. This looks fantastic and just what I’ve been missing for all those
Saturdays out shopping when all i really want to do is listen to the footy

So that’s me pretty much up to date.
Roll on iLife which will no doubt bring on a new enthusiasm. I just need that in
all aspects of my life now